Wagon Cars

Estate cars: a sedan's length with the roof carried flat to a tailgate, plus the two-door shooting brakes.

4 models

Extend a sedan’s roof level to the back of the car, put a tailgate where the boot lid was, and the result is a wagon. The gain is not mostly length. It is height and shape: a load bay with vertical sides that reaches the roof, and a flat floor once the rear seats drop. Wheelbase and ride height are unchanged from the sedan, so almost nothing about how the car drives changes either.

Europe still buys them and the German premium brands still build them, most in plain long-roof form, some raised on their springs with body cladding for light rough-road use. The Audi A6 allroad at 5,016 mm is the second kind. The body is being tried again outside its home market too: the Lynk & Co 07 GT is a Chinese plug-in hybrid wagon of 4,846 mm, and Bovensiepen applies the shape to a performance car with the 05 GT. United States sales have been thin since the 1990s, when those buyers moved first to minivans and then to SUVs.

Models

Bovensiepen 05 GT
Hybrid Coming Soon
Bovensiepen
05 GT
800 hp67 km WLTPAWD
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a wagon and an SUV?
Height, and how the two are built. A wagon keeps a sedan's ride height, seating position and centre of gravity, and finds its space by extending the roof backwards. An SUV finds space by going up. On the same platform the wagon is usually lighter, uses less fuel and handles better; the SUV has ground clearance and a higher seat.
What is a shooting brake?
A wagon with two doors instead of four. The term comes from British horse-drawn carriages used by shooting parties, was later attached to coachbuilt two-door estates, and now marks a wagon body applied to a coupe rather than to a sedan.
Why is a wagon called an estate in Europe?
Different market, different word for the same body. Estate is British, station wagon North American, and the shape also travels as Kombi in Germany, break in France and familiare in Italy. Manufacturers add their own names on top, which is how one body reaches buyers as an Avant, a Touring, a Sports Tourer or a Variant.
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